Is Your Remote Team Burned Out? How “Async” Work Solves Zoom Fatigue

Can Remote Work Boost Profits? The 6 Lessons from Running Remote

Stop micromanaging and start scaling. Discover why “asynchronous” communication is the key to productive remote teams in this expert review of Running Remote. Ready to ditch the 9-to-5 grind? Scroll down to discover the asynchronous secrets that help remote founders build unicorns without a central office.

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Beginning in 2019, the COVID pandemic forced many companies to go remote in ways their leaders once thought impossible. While some stumbled, and some companies are now requiring staff members to return to the office, at least on a hybrid schedule, other firms embraced working from home. Consultants Liam Martin and Rob Rawson offer experienced guidance about the ins and outs of remote work. They find that having a remote workforce requires leaders to adopt an “asynchronous” mindset that empowers employees with true autonomy. Remote workers may miss out on in-person collaboration and on some promotion opportunities that require being in the office, but they gain flexibility, time for individual deep work, heightened online skills, and often, greater productivity and growth.

Take-Aways

• Companies can build and scale a better business with a remote workforce.
• Remote work can shed light on some old office myths.
• Lesson 1: Throw out old methods of getting things done.
• Lesson 2: Change the way people communicate.
• Lesson 3: Provide transparent information to all departments.
• Lesson 4: Use strong metrics to measure and reward progress.
• Lesson 5: Implement a hands-off management style.
• Lesson 6: Hire for talent, not location.

Summary

Companies can build and scale a better business with a remote workforce.

When Rob Rawson and Liam Martin started their Running Remote consultancy, they sought to prove that leaders can build a business without having every employee in the same place.

When the authors approached venture capital firms to seek funding for their growing consultancy, each VC firm encouraged them to relocate to its particular city, with investors claiming that building a “tech unicorn” required having the whole workforce under one roof. Rawson and Martin proved them wrong. They developed a successful business with a dispersed workforce, and many of the firms they first solicited have since turned to them for advice on building a productive remote or hybrid workforce.

“Just why do we hang onto the primacy of the city office anyway?”

When remote-first companies achieve significant growth, their success throws many beliefs about the necessity of in-office collaboration into question. Studies show that the watercooler culture of office politics costs businesses more than $600 billion a year in wasted time. In contrast, remote businesses prove 30% to 40% more productive, and most remote employees report greater happiness than office-based staff members.

Remote businesses face far less likelihood of toxic work environments. Remote workers needn’t endure sexual harassment, bullying, or hostile workplaces – the root of legal actions against some Silicon Valley companies, such as Uber.

Remote work can shed light on some old office myths.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, workers switched from coming into their employers’ offices to working at home. Many found they gained better work-life balance, more time with their families, and an enjoyable degree of autonomy and control. As remote workers at many companies displayed increased productivity, the appeal of having staff members working outside the office grew.

Offices are a relatively new concept. The modern office didn’t arrive until the 18th century. Shopkeepers often lived above their stores, and farmers lived next to their fields. Those who worked in the first offices described them as every bit as “wearisome” as many modern offices prove to be. Office issues have remained the same for decades: long commutes, grueling hours, stressful social politics, and a sedentary lifestyle.

Though many companies tried to reconfigure the nature of office life, as with Silicon Valley’s playrooms and nap pods, additional perks don’t address ongoing issues of burnout and depression. However, if companies approach remote work correctly, it offers satisfaction, independence, and dignity.

“If you’re trying to recreate the office, you’ve already lost.”

Adopting an “asynchronous” mindset enables employees and their bosses to thrive holistically in the remote world. This mindset is based on three principles: less in-person communication, democratized bureaucracy, and transparent evaluations. It frees workers from micromanagement and energy-draining office politics.

Remote work can teach corporate leaders six important lessons.

Lesson 1: Throw out old methods of getting things done.

During the pandemic, many companies complicated their transition to remote work by trying to bring the office into people’s homes. Their employees quickly found themselves exhausted by endless Zoom meetings, and they felt oppressed and patronized by mouse-tracking apps. These companies generally fell prey to three mistakes in the early stages of managing remote workers.

1. Their managers didn’t change the way they communicated, and they expected constant collaboration.
2. They micromanaged employees with monitoring, constant check-ins, and sometimes mandatory office meetings.
3. They failed to empower employees to manage themselves.

Companies that avoided these mistakes and embraced a new mindset experienced greater productivity and growth. For example, the leaders of Vidyard, which makes asynchronous video products, had their doubts about going remote when the pandemic hit. Yet once CEO Michael Litt left the office behind, Vidyard experienced a 10% increase in productivity and a doubling of new hires, since it was now free to hire the most talented people no matter where they lived. Its employees were happier because they didn’t have to commute, and nobody missed mandatory collaboration.

“Every company has to live through its own rebirth.”

In the companies that found the greatest success going remote, leaders embraced systems that promoted autonomy, provided transparent information, and measured progress through relevant metrics instead of in-person meetings.

Lesson 2: Change the way people communicate.

Talking over each other in meetings, chatting in common spaces, and creating constant interruptions were the norm in ordinary synchronous office communication. This style poses as creative collaboration, but it actually hampers employees from achieving the level of concentration that deep work and maximum productivity demand.

“Synchronous interruptions are poison for work.” (Amir Salihefendić, founder and CEO of Doist)

While in-person communication is useful for brainstorming or group problem-solving, all other work-related communication should switch to asynchronous (“async”) methods to allow everyone a choice of when to participate.

Async communication proves a blessing for introverts because it relies on directness and accuracy rather than favoring the loudest or most charismatic person in a meeting. Async methods reward effort and hard work over charm and personality.

For example, Adii Pienaar successfully creates and sells e-commerce companies. Yet compared to other CEOs, Pienaar is relatively quiet and shy. He thrives by communicating in writing. He almost exclusively uses written direct communications for everything except emergency group problem-solving. Pienaar argues that async communication allows more time to gather accurate data, more thoughtful debate, and fewer emotional reactions. Async communication opens the floor for everyone to be heard and leads to more accountability and greater participation.

Lesson 3: Provide transparent information to all departments.

Every company has a certain way of doing things, a documented process each employee follows. In the remote world, companies must streamline this process to achieve maximum efficiency and productivity. Having a clear, easily understood process allows people to focus on more complex work.

Jonathan Ronzio, co-CEO of Trainual, found great benefits in having a thorough, solid, and documented process. When the authors’ consultancy held a leadership retreat in Bali, Ronzio was the only CEO who was able to relax, meditate, and enjoy nature for five straight days without having to answer a single work call. His documented processes help his company run practically on autopilot.

“Documentation is the manager…that lets you build out of the ether.” (Jonathan Ronzio)

Creating such a process starts with understanding why things run the way they do. In a classic teaching story, a child notices his mother cutting a ham in half before roasting it and asks why. The mother replies that is how her mother did it, and when the child asks his grandmother, she gives the same answer. His great-grandmother, however, says she cut her hams in half because her original roasting pan was too small to hold an entire ham. Just like these mothers, companies often operate on outdated principles and processes without ever understanding why such holdovers continue to linger.

Getting rid of useless steps and unnecessary information calls for redesigning processes. Work out a new process, and then work it out again, paying attention to each step. Then work it out, a third time – step by step – to lock it down. Test it on employees to discover what facets don’t function as smoothly as you wish. Keep refining the process until it runs well. The final result should be so simple no one can possibly misinterpret it. Once your efficient processes are running your workflow, use a series of specific metrics to track and measure efficiency and productivity.

Lesson 4: Use strong metrics to measure and reward progress.

Metrics help companies measure productivity, profits, and performance. Provide your remote workers with access to these numbers, so they can track their own performance. Depending on corporate policies, metrics can free them from annual reviews. When employees receive weekly reports of their metrics, they can recognize immediately if they’re falling short and can seek ways to improve.

Not all metrics are equal. Remote workers generally prefer strong metrics that don’t require explanations about the success or failure of particular endeavors. Use metrics that focus on the quantitative over the qualitative, and follow leading indicators, not lagging ones.

“High level clarity divides the wheat from the chaff.”

As you create your metrics, consider each step you take. For example, the authors’ Running Remote consultancy uses a metric called, “Cumulative Domain Authority” to track the number of back-links their online written content receives. When they get back-links from, say, several news websites, they add up their domain authority (DA) scores to create an average. Thus, their metric considers the differentiated value of linking to various websites and the quantity of the links.

Sharing metrics with every employee creates egalitarian transparency. Employees feel informed and respected, and they can more easily understand how their individual contributions affect everyone else. No one can argue with what the numbers show, and everyone stays on track.

Lesson 5: Implement a hands-off management style.

In remote companies, having strong metrics changes the role of the manager. Traditional management moves – barking orders, micromanaging, and stalling the workflow by withholding permissions – can’t survive in the remote world. Effective remote managers empower their workers with autonomy. They seek counterintuitive hires.

For example, hiring lazy people often proves surprisingly worthwhile, because they usually find more efficient ways of working. A 2013 article from the BBC cited a US employee who outsourced his entire job – for a fifth of his salary – to a company based in Shenyang, China company. He broke multiple rules, but the point remains that left to their own devices, workers usually increase their productivity.

Remote companies empower employees by making metrics and data transparent to all departments. Everyone can see where they rank in the company, and they can make informed decisions without waiting for approval from the boss. This makes all your employees into managers, especially over their own work.

As part of a hands-off approach, remote managers monitor weekly or monthly progress reports. For example, X-Team CEO Ryan Chartrand has his engineers demonstrate their software frequently so he and his executive team can catch any problems as soon as possible. Other engineers can access these demos and track the company’s progress. Chartrand doesn’t have to keep an eye on each worker because the process keeps things running smoothly.

Lesson 6: Hire for talent, not location.

Exercising less hands-on supervision frees managers to focus on attracting top talent. Remote work provides a sense of freedom both for employees seeking new jobs and employers looking for new talent. Companies with remote workers can reap these advantages.

• Get the top choice of employees who precisely fit your needs.
• Seek real-time evidence of a potential hire’s credibility – for instance, ask for actual ad campaigns created by a marketer you’re considering hiring.
• Hire people for specific projects without worrying about keeping them for the long term.
• Gain independent employees who don’t need a lot of supervision.

Remote hiring focuses on each individual’s core talent. It also enables companies to gauge whether a new person fits their corporate culture before fully committing to a hire.

About the Authors

Liam Martin and CEO Rob Rawson co-founded Time Doctor.com which offers time and productivity tracking for remote teams.